Month: July 2013

As American families prepare to celebrate the Nation’s birthday tomorrow, July 4, 2013, the start of the NFL regular season is now just 2 months away. While the dog days of summer lend themselves to horses and wagers on baseball games, the fall football season is when the real money is made. Bookies are chomping at the bit for football to begin, because it means a BIG influx of cash and wagers, the lifeblood of any gaming business.

Our sister site, SportsBetting3.com has recently updated its odds and NFL schedule section for the 2013-14 Fall season. The odds pages are now powered by SportsOptions, and offer near live updates on lines and odds for both NFL and college football games. Opening lines are posted, and the lines from each major online sportsbook are updated as they become available. BetOnline.ag has already posted odds for the NFL regular season week 1, hoping to attract some early money.

In our opinion its best to hold off on football bets for another month or two. The preseason starts in roughly 5 weeks, and it usually showcases the second string and new hires. You can’t get a sense for how strong a football team is until the starters take the field for the money games. In that vain, practice spotting bad lines during the preseason, but don’t make any big bets just yet. You’ve still got 17 weeks of action PLUS the postseason to make money. Ease into it.

At present, online football bets are still made offshore. The DOJ has slowly eaten away at these foreign operations, most recently shutting down Legends sportsbook and arresting key management figures at The Greek. That leaves a few key players, plus any smaller lesser-known start ups. Playing at a “new” online sportsbook is risky: most likely, it is being run by the same people who abandoned a previously untrustworthy operation. There isn’t much new blood in the offshore market because online gambling is (SLOWLY) going live in the USA.

To be sure, legalized sports betting online from Las Vegas or Atlantic City is a few years off. Proponents of legalization face an uphill battle against strong lobbies from the NFL, NBA, NHL, MLB, and NCAA (nearly ALL the major sports organizations are staunchly opposed to ANY form of legal sports betting, let alone national online betting). For the time being, online poker will be leading the charge, followed by full casino games. Sports betting – the 900lb gorilla – will quietly bide its time until the legislative climate is ripe for a bold move.

Football is still a couple months off, so we urge you to visit some of our industry-leading gaming websites offering full suites of casino games. Real Time Gaming continues to drive the USA friendly market, with a handful of Top Game operations still above water despite recent news that a few were leaving the market. Payment processing remains king: choose a website with reliable deposits AND withdrawals.